Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [132]
Both of Cuevas’s eyes were blackened, and his mouth was wide open in anticipation as he prepared for the inevitable ending. He could no longer turn to his power for backup. With over a minute remaining, Duran cornered Cuevas and landed almost a dozen uppercuts and hooks that bounced the Mexican into the ringpost. Cuevas hung on and refused to let go of Duran until Kin broke them apart. It was his only respite, as Duran moved him against the ropes for another ambush. He banged a right hook to the body and then to the head. Another uppercut had Cuevas wobbling to the other side of the ring. No longer was he throwing punches. A straight right jolted the head of Cuevas, forcing many in the crowd to wonder, how much more can he take?
It was a sad sight as Cuevas couldn’t defend himself anymore. Duran wailed away with five punches, the left hook to the ribs did the most damage as Cuevas slumped to his knees and grasped the ropes. He had risen by nine, and signaled with his glove for manager Lupe Sanchez to stay put, but it was too late. As Cuevas began to walk toward Duran to continue, Sanchez had already thrown in the towel. The fight was stopped at 2:24 of the round; the twenty-five-year-old had aged ten years in as many minutes.
Having never mastered the classic bob-and-weave, Cuevas tended to move toward punches, not away from them. He would lose six more bouts to inferior opposition before leaving the game in 1989. “I am a good friend of the Duran family and I think of him as a brother,” said Cuevas. “I remember the punch Duran hit me with. It was a bad fight for me.”
Duran looked ahead. As for the letter from Arcel, he had responded with his fists in a manner his words couldn’t express:
Dear Ray
I appreciate your concern, but I’m not done just yet. I have only begun.
Regards, Cholo.
16
Return of the King
It was a slow, deliberate pounding. And Davey Moore, because of his youth and because of his heart, took a lot more punishment than he should have. It was a massacre. You had a sense watching it, that this was it for Davey Moore, and sure enough it was.
Steve Farhood
IN THREE YEARS, Roberto Duran had traveled the gamut from hero to hopeless, beloved to despised. The crushing of Pipino Cuevas had restored at least some of his lustre. Duran had made a promise at Torrijos’s graveside to bring home one more world championship in his honor. Whether his next move would fulfill that vow or send Duran closer to his retirement speech was up to an undefeated junior middleweight from New York’s toughest neighborhood.
It could have been billed as the Vet vs. the Rookie. Davey Moore was a young stud from the Bronx, a WBC junior middleweight champion of limited experience but great potential. Muscles sprouted on his frame; his was the kind of body that despised fat. He had challenged unbeaten world champion Tadashi Mihara with a number ten ranking and only eight pro fights to his name but had won in six rounds and many fight insiders had him on the trail to greatness. Moore had watched the Cuevas fight on TV from an Atlantic City hotel where he’d been celebrating victory of his own over challenger Gary Guiden. He had been impressed but not overawed.
The fight was scheduled for Duran’s thirty-second birthday, June 16, 1983, and was originally supposed to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, but promoter Bob Arum moved it to Madison Square Garden when undercard fighter Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini was injured. “We decided to train in Buenos Aires because we had a direct flight to Johannesburg,” said Luis Spada. “On the same show, Mancini was going to fight, but he got a broken hand. I got a call and Arum had to change the spot of the fight. Then I heard it was Madison Square Garden. Roberto was happy because that’s where he wanted to fight. He said, ‘Okay, let’s stop in Panama first.’ It was natural for Roberto because he always wanted to see his family and his children. But I knew better and told him that we would